MediaTek Shows The World's First Live Demos of Wi-Fi 7 Technology to Customers and Industry Leaders

[TheLostSwede]

MediaTek today announced the world's first live demo of Wi-Fi 7 technology, highlighting the capabilities of its forthcoming Wi-Fi 7 Filogic connectivity portfolio. MediaTek is currently showcasing two Wi-Fi 7 demos to key customers and industry collaborators to demonstrate the technology's super-fast speeds and low latency transmission.

"The rollout of Wi-Fi 7 will mark the first time that Wi-Fi can be a true wireline/Ethernet replacement for super high-bandwidth applications," said Alan Hsu, corporate vice president and general manager of the Intelligent Connectivity business at MediaTek. "MediaTek's Wi-Fi 7 technology will be the backbone of home, office and industrial networks and provide seamless connectivity for everything from multi-player AR/VR applications to cloud gaming and 4K calls to 8K streaming and beyond."




MediaTek's demo shows how its Wi-Fi 7 Filogic technology can achieve the maximum speed defined by IEEE 802.11be and demonstrates its multi-link operation (MLO) technology. MLO technology aggregates multiple channels on different frequencies bands at the same time to highlight how network traffic can still flow seamlessly even if there is interference or congestion on the bands. MLO technology will be critical for delivering faster and more reliable video streaming, gaming and anything else that requires constant, sustained and real-time throughput.

"Faster broadband Internet access and more demanding applications such as higher resolution video streaming and VR gaming are driving demand for Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and soon Wi-Fi 7," said Mario Morales, group vice president, Semiconductors at IDC. "Wi-Fi 7's advances in channel width, QAM, and new features such as multi-link operation (MLO) will make Wi-Fi 7 very attractive for devices including flagship smartphones, PCs, consumer devices and vertical industries like retail and industrial; as service providers begin to deploy a wider spectrum of hotspots across these market segments."

MediaTek has been involved in the development of the Wi-Fi 7 standard since its inception, and the company is one of the first adopters of Wi-Fi 7 technology.

"Today's consumers want an always-connected, reliable and fast Wi-Fi connection for many applications such as video calls, 4K/8K TV entertainment, real-time gaming, and others," said Moon Ho Lee, president at Korea Mercury. "MediaTek's Wi-Fi 7 technology can fulfill the current need for all the applications consumers enjoy today and also open the door for future AR/VR applications which we can't even imagine today."

Wi-Fi 7 is unique in that it offers completely new capabilities in all the available spectrums for Wi-Fi uses, including 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz. Wi-Fi 7 will deliver 2.4X faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6 - even with the same number of antennas - since Wi-Fi 7 can utilize 320Mhz channels and support 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology. Other notable features of Wi-Fi 7 include MLO to reduce latency by transmitting Wi-Fi on multiple bands, in addition to multi-user resource unit (MRU) features for enhanced interference avoidances and mitigation.

Products with Wi-Fi 7 are expected to hit the market starting in 2023.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Lycanwolfen]

40gbps through wifi sounds impressive. Why would you need LAN cables at that point or even fiber 10GB between. WiFi 7 would just replace it.

 

[bonehead123]

Bring it

 

[ncrs]

40gbps through wifi sounds impressive. Why would you need LAN cables at that point or even fiber 10GB between. WiFi 7 would just replace it.

Theoretical speeds are fine if you're in a RF-isolated laboratory. As soon as you step into the real word WiFi shows its ugly side, even with the newest standards.
I think a wired connection will always be superior, especially in latency and stability. Don't get me wrong, both methods have their uses

Edit: Oh and for WiFi 8 we can add 802.11ay into the mix so that's +176Gbit/s as long as you're close to the AP with no major obstacles (like walls).

 

[80-watt Hamster]

40gbps through wifi sounds impressive. Why would you need LAN cables at that point or even fiber 10GB between. WiFi 7 would just replace it.

Theoretical speeds are fine if you're in a RF-isolated laboratory. As soon as you step into the real word WiFi shows its ugly side, even with the newest standards.
I think a wired connection will always be superior, especially in latency and stability. Don't get me wrong, both methods have their uses

Edit: Oh and for WiFi 8 we can add 802.11ay into the mix so that's +176Gbit/s as long as you're close to the AP with no major obstacles (like walls).

This mirrors my experience. Even 802.11n seems to have trouble going through more than a couple of walls. Don't get me started on 5GHz. Then again, maybe all the hand-me-down routers I've used suck. *shrug*

Has the band congestion issue been addressed? Or is it up to router firmware to poll available bands and select the least-populated?

 

[ncrs]

This mirrors my experience. Even 802.11n seems to have trouble going through more than a couple of walls. Don't get me started on 5GHz. Then again, maybe all the hand-me-down routers I've used suck. *shrug*

2.4GHz is far more reliable in terms of long range communication, in principle at least. It also takes two for the dance - if your router/AP is strong and the client device weak it still won't work well. There are many factors making WiFi design quite hard. Using narrower channels (20MHz for 2.4 and 40Mhz for 5) helps at the cost of maximum speed. Too bad there's only 3 independent 20Mhz channels in the 2.4GHz band.

Has the band congestion issue been addressed? Or is it up to router firmware to poll available bands and select the least-populated?

Can it be addressed? An AP can dynamically change channels, yes, but it can reach a point where there's simply too much going on in the air. From my experience with consumer APs this mechanism of scan-and-adjust happens rarely, most of the time only when the device starts up. This is usually because the scan and normal AP functions are exclusive.
Some enterprise APs have always-on radios that just scan the RF domain, with the control system being able to optimize entire AP farms based on those readings.
WiFi 6E unlocks more channels, but it faces the same problems as the 5GHz band.

 

[iiee]

I would like to see how wifi7 can handle stable and low ping between the device and router across obstacles. Gamers are not particular about bandwidth, what matters is latency.

 

[Fourstaff]

This mirrors my experience. Even 802.11n seems to have trouble going through more than a couple of walls. Don't get me started on 5GHz. Then again, maybe all the hand-me-down routers I've used suck. *shrug*

Maybe good time to upgrade to mesh wifi. Game changing if your house has more than a few walls.

 

[ncrs]

I would like to see how wifi7 can handle stable and low ping between the device and router across obstacles. Gamers are not particular about bandwidth, what matters is latency.

As far as I can see it's still inferior to wired chiefly because it's half-duplex. 802.11ax WiFi 6 is still half-duplex unless you go into insane setups with both client and AP having 4x4 antennas, which I haven't seen in the wild.

Maybe good time to upgrade to mesh wifi. Game changing if your house has more than a few walls.

Good idea, but that increases latency with each wireless hop you add.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Maybe good time to upgrade to mesh wifi. Game changing if your house has more than a few walls.

You're probably right, but I'm a cheapskate.

 

[Fourstaff]

Good idea, but that increases latency with each wireless hop you add.

Oh yes, but it definitely beats having no signal instead.